As many of you know I will be heading off to college in the next month... I recently acquired a Gateway MX3225 Laptop for only $400 which gets 3 hours of battery life... which is perfect for me for taking notes and such... but since im going to school for networking, I need more of a powerhouse in my dorm. So I got to thinking "what saves space, is really powerful, and isnt redicuiliously expensive.... MiniPC."

So here is my current setup:

Athlon XP 2500+ Barton Core 1.87ghz
512Mb PC2700
120 gig primary hard drive
60 gig secondardy hard drive
Radeon 9600 256mb
Plextor PX-712A DVD burner

So a pretty basic setup... Its lacking in the Memory and video card department, and the processor is a stones throw away from being obsolete. I just decided it wquld be good to have something smaller an more powerful.

I plan to reuse my DVD rom and hard drives. So thats a big money saver. But I need a video card/memory/ barebones (mobo and case)and a processor... here is what I came up with.

-ASUS Pundit P1-AH1 AMD Socket 939 $169.99
-XFX PVT42EUDE3 Geforce 6800 XTreme 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 $134.77
-Patriot 1GB (2 x 512MB) $90.99
-AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 2000MHz $109.00

Shipping $26.73

Total - $531.48


price is a little higher then I wanted to go. I didnt want to go much over $450. But seems like a perfect setup... What I want to know is if anybody has any comments about any of the parts choices... Particullarly the video card, because ive been a little out of date on video cards. anything I get get a better bang for my buck for? I refuse to purchase another ATI product. I used to have a 9600 XT. but it burned out after 2 months of use, this 9600 I have now I had laying around, and its worse then my old TI4200.



98 Corolla LE 1.8L DOHC 1ZZFE TEIN H.Tech Springs Tokico HP series Struts Short ram air intake Tsudo Axel Back Exhaust ... if a jelly fish stung me.. would you pee on the wound?